Word – Previous Format Breaks when Deleting Section Break in Word

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My favorite program, microsoft word…
has decided that if I delete the final section break (which is causing my document to have an extra blank page), it will break the formatting of the entire document before the break.

The document ends, then (with formatting shown) I can see the final section break. When I delete it, the ruler resets and my margins are all forced to the leftmost side of the page. When I try selecting all and moving it back over, many parts of the document (which contains tables, pictures, figures, etc) do not realign correctly.

Is there a way for me to delete this section break without altering the formatting before the break?

There are two other section breaks in the document, one after the cover letter, and a second after the table of contents. Then there are approximately 20 pages of content, the final section break, and a blank page I would like to destroy.

before and after deleting section break:

view of page ruler while cursor is in final section:

Best Answer

The source of your problem is, that although Section Breaks give the impression of being at the beginning of the section, they are actually placed at its end and they contain all the section-specific formatting for what is in the section before them. When you delete a section break, the section above gets merged into, and takes the properties of, the section below. This is of course the opposite of what you intended.

Your problem is then getting rid of section breaks, but NOT of section formatting.

The following procedure comes from the article Microsoft Word – How to remove last section break, where you will find more details and screenshots.

Go to the very end of the document and into the final section‘s header. If it's a continuous section break, you will first need to temporarily create a page break at the end of the document, so that you don't go into the previous section's Header.
Make sure that both the Header and Footer are set to “Same as Previous”. If they aren't, use the Header/Footer toolbar to set it to this. Then return to the main document.
Go to the penultimate section, select File / Print and then choose Page Setup at the bottom of the print properties
Make sure to go thru each tab without changing anything and close Page Setup window by pressing OK. This makes Word “Remember” all the settings in the dialog.
Now go to the final section and press F4 (an equivalent of repeat last command). This applies the “remembered” settings to the final section.
If there are differences in the column formatting between the two sections, you'll also need to use the F4 trick with the Format + Columns dialog.
You can now safely delete the final section break (and the manual page break, if you inserted one).

If you are having problems with the above procedure, a slightly different variant is found in the article Getting Rid of Section Breaks, but Not Section Formatting.

In the case that there are only slight differences between the formatting of the last section and the one before it, it might be simpler to modify the formatting of the last section so it agrees with the last-but-one section.

Related Solutions

Word 2010 – page break before H2 except after H1

Creating a new style will accomplish what you want. Try this procedure:

Use the Paragraphs dialog box to make Word insert a page break before all Heading 2 text.
Create a new style, "Heading 2 Prime", that's exactly like Heading 2, but uncheck the "page break before" option. Be sure you spell "Heading 2 Prime" exactly as written here.
Press Alt+F11 to open the VBA development environment, then click "Insert > Module" to open a new window for entering programs.
Paste the following statements into the window. These statements replace all Heading 2 paragraphs that come after Heading 1 paragraphs, with the Heading 2 Prime style.

Code to paste:

'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
Sub replace_Heading2_with_Heading2Prime()

Dim i As Integer
Dim s As String
Dim h As String

'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
'loop through all pgp and report heading 2

For i = 1 To ActiveDocument.Paragraphs.Count

s = ActiveDocument.Paragraphs(i).Style

If (s = "Heading 2") Then
 h = findPriorHeading(i - 1)
 If (h = "Heading 1") Then
 ActiveDocument.Paragraphs(i).Style = "Heading 2 Prime"
 End If
End If

Next i

Exit Sub

End Sub

Function findPriorHeading(iPgp As Integer) As Variant
Dim i As Integer
Dim blnFoundHeading As Boolean
'walk backwards until any heading is found
 With ActiveDocument
 i = iPgp
 blnFoundHeading = False
 Do Until (i < 1 Or blnFoundHeading)
 s = .Paragraphs(i).Style
 If (InStr(s, "Heading") > 0) Then
 blnFoundHeading = True
 findPriorHeading = s
 Exit Function
 End If
 i = i - 1
 Loop
 End With
 findPriorHeading = ""

End Function
'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''

Press Alt+F11 to return to Word, then press Alt+F8 to open the Macros dialog box. Double click the "replace_Heading2_with_Heading2Prime" item to run the macro.

I hope this helps.

Word – MS Word: formatting reveals no section breaks, but header/footer show multiple sections

Thanks to a comment about hidden text, I was reminded of a known problem with track changes and automatic ToC/ lists of tables: sometimes even if you are looking at the final version (no markup), it will skip some entries no matter how many times you redo the field codes, so a list of tables will include 1, 2, 4, 7, 8, 9, 11. Once you accept all changes, if you autoupdate the list again, it will be correct.

With that in mind, I accepted all changes, and lo and behold the section breaks were corrected. I made no new changes, but the document structure finally reflected what the formatting codes said should have been there all along. There must be some logic as to which changes Word implements at which stage of the process, but it seems pretty arbitrary to me.

Thanks again!

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Word 2010 – page break before H2 except after H1

Word – MS Word: formatting reveals no section breaks, but header/footer show multiple sections

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